Dead Pixels
by Clockwork Artichoke
Summary: Glitches, from the point of view of in game characters. It's that time again, Kids! Let's get Cosmic Horror-ey, shall we?
1. Introductions

Alrighty then. First, I want to say that the main in this story is neither an existing character or an OC in the technical sense. Technically. I mean, he's simply a generic pokemon trainer. The only aspect of his character I've thought of at this point is his name, what with the whole colour thing. Yes, it's designed to be humourous, but remember: that's the colour of the universe.  
I mean, this is one of the only things I'll do where character is less important than events. I only hope my peculiar style of writing doesn't detract from what this is. Right. Now, that's out of the way...

* * *

A pitch black sky, devoid of stars. Or was it? The sky was full of them, really. It's just that there was... something... in the way. Not some galactic blanket, just a tiny shape at about the same height as the clouds. Something that small - maybe it was the size of a door - couldn't possibly obscure the entire sky. And yet, as the eye scanned the blackness for some light, in some desperate panicked frenzy, the shape was always there. _Always_, even when the eye shuts tightly in a vain attempt to recalibrate. The shape in the heavens was too small to cover pretty much anything, _but let nothing pass. Nothing._

Cosmic Latte woke with the obvious cold sweat. He laughed, nervous, taking little solace in the fact that he didn't bolt upright and scream as the camera zoomed in on his tonsils. It was... 5:24 AM.  
Cosmic Latte was obviously not his real name; rather, he'd chosen it when he 'began his journey in the world of Pokemon'. He'd chosen a colour for his name after some of the more famous trainers; Red, Yellow, Gold... You know, the masters. Cosmic Latte was an impressive sounding shade of beige.  
Sadly, Latte was beginning to feel past hs prime. All those famous names had earned their titles before they'd even reached puberty, and here was Latte, still having nightmares in his home town at sixteen. 'Sigh,' he sighed, sighing.

When he eventually awoke, Latte decided to go out training. He wandered down to the Pokemon centre, to use the PC BOX system. He deposited the MAGIKARP he'd been hoping to evolve and withdrew... Ulqui, his Umbreon, Sora, his Gardevoir, and Ashcroft, his shiney Charizard. Ulqui and Sora were his pride and joy (not respectively), had freakishly high special attack and special defense (respectively) and had been a gift and his first catch (respectively), and Ashcroft had his utmost respect, having all around high stats and being the rare offspring of his Mother's Charizard. All three were around level 80.  
Then Cosmic Latte walked into a tree. Things like that tended to happen when he started thinking about statistics.


	2. Things Happen

Cosmic Latte decided to fly to Kanto. Ascroft was big, even for a Charizard. He could easily get there with Latte on his back, but Latte didn't want to make things difficult for him. He knew that if he went and left his bag at home, Ashcroft would have an easier time flying across continents, thus meaning he wouldn't be as tired, thus more training. Latte was a boy of formidable intellect, which was the reason he so often walked into things.

So Latte walked back home. His back was aching anyway. The bag itself was some marvel of modern science; it held everything. He kept a bloody bicycle in there, for God's sake. Arceus' sake. Not literally, by the way, he wasn't that kind of trainer. Well, who was? The latest criminal organisation's biggest threat was a device to drain all the water from one of the lakes in Sinnoh, meaning... well, all the fish pokemon can breathe out of water anyway. What was the point? 'Team Galactic', Latte had heard a lot about them. How they wanted to destroy the world, and make a new one, and needed to harvest souls, or something. Eh, stupid end-of-the-world-cults. Latte didn't really care. He was back home now.

Latte threw his bag on the floor and winced as something cracked. Probably all the plates he had in there. He'd thrown out the bowls, but his bag was still very heavy. It held _everything_, after all, and Latte often referred to himself as Atlas in his little internal monologues when he was wearing it. He bid farewell to his Mother, and the senile old fool started muttering something about dinner and resting. It was only about nine o' clock so he just left her to it. 'Come on, Ashcroft,' he said, letting the Pokeball fall out of his hand and unleashing his Charizard on the world. 'Let's go.'  
'GRAAAROAR.' said Ashcroft.  
'Oh, why do I bother talking?'

Latte steered Ashcroft towards Viridian City while humming the Speed Racer theme tune under his breath. They touched down unsteadily and Latte called his Charizard back into the Dusk Ball he'd gotten especially for him. Ashcroft was nearly black, after all... it was fitting. 'Right. Where am I going?' said Latte, frowning. Then his features lit up. '... Let's go kick some Pikachu.'  
He wandered through the town talking to noone, and entering noones house. He wasn't one to quest for information, he'd bought a laptop from some store that went out of business years ago. Because of this, he had known how to use a potion spray without any random passers by to enlighten him. As he headed north, he noticed something ahead. It... looked like...  
'An old man. Led in the street. Why is an old man led in the street?'  
'He hasn't had his coffee,' said a young woman nearby, startling Latte.  
He pulled himself together. 'He hasn't had his coffee, so he saw fit to lie drooling in the street? He's going to die soon, I think.' he said, walking onwards. Suddenly, the old man rose from the dirt like a furious demon, and was an inch away from Latte's face. 'BGRUUUUUUGH. WHERE'S MY COFFEE, CHILD?'  
Latte merely raised an eyebrow.  
'Hahaha, he gets like this every morning.' said the woman, smiling happily.  
Latte raised his _other _eyebrow in disbelief. '...Every morning? And yet you don't prepare for this before he leaves your damn house?'  
'Ohoho,' smiled the woman, and Latte walked away before he made Sora crush their feeble minds.


	3. Ill Omen

Cosmic Latte returned some time later. He'd been setting Ulqui on random wild pokemon, and laughing as they shattered their level 3 skulls against the might of Ulqui's immense defense. The fact that this thought rhymed snapped Latte out of his trance just before he would have fallen over a wall, which was nice. He'd decided to sneak past the old man and continue towards the forest. Latte was going to throw a Weedle at him. See, this would both distract the old man _and_ probably harm him, so Latte was feeling pretty good as he sidled up the path. Latte was perhaps the only trainer on the planet that could sidle in any direction.

As he neared the old man's patrol line, he slowed down and produced from a pocket the Weedle he'd found. He didn't know why it even was where he found it, but it seemed to have a pretty big horn. This meant either: The Weedle was extra poisonous, which would be good; or: this particular Weedle had lots of female friends. Latte was pretty sure it was the former, but knew he'd need to wash his hands either way.

So, the next paragraph will be presented to you in the present tense, because won't that be _exciting_?  
Safely around a corner, Latte draws his arm back and prepares to launch the Weedle at the old man's face. He focuses, and then sends Weedle flying towards its role as a decoy, noticing only too late that the old man was staring, wide awake, his eyes darting around their sockets. As the Weedle comes within an inch of his head, the old man spins in some zen like state and swats the Weedle from the air, sending it crashing to the ground. Latte's legs betray him and he runs out to the old man.

The old man looked him up and down, mostly up, and grinned a toothless grin. Latte looked at him and felt genuinely afraid for his safety. The old man almost seemed to be flickering... clearly, he'd replaced his coffee with red bull. Red Tauros. Whatever. (Latte had never understood why, for example, Pikachu was the 'mouse' pokemon. What the hell was a mouse? The only 'mice' were Pikachu, Raichu, and maybe Rattata and Ratticate. But they had 'rat' in the names, so they couldn't- wait, what the hell was a rat?) But the old man wasvibrating, almost, but while not moving at all... 'Hey, young'un, wanna see how to catch a pokemon?'  
'Um, not really.' said Latte, sinking into his usual deadpan. 'I'm not an idiot, see.'  
'Well, this is how! Listen up!'

And with that, Latte couldn't move. He was rooted to the spot, with a feeling going down to his very _bones_ that he needed to get far, far away from this man. He felt like if he stayed that something bad was going to happen. That doesn't sound like a particularly potent statement alone, but coupled with an inability even to breathe and a man with his back turned to you, flickering, all the while giving off a feeling that if he turned around _nothing would be there_? Latte was watching this man acting out some bizarre, flickering charade with an insect, rooted to the spot and unable to look away, unable to move, unable to open his mouth. And Latte had to _scream._


	4. Random Encounters

Latte ran. Well, he flew, on Ashcroft, which achieved the same purpose: getting away from the creepy old man. He needed to get far away, miles away, years away if he could. What the hell was that?

Rhetoric aside, he had to think of somewhere to land. Somewhere out of the way. Somewhere... remote, where he could think. Somewhere like Cinnabar Island. Hmm. But where would a place like that exist? Oh, wait.

Cosmic Latte decided he didn't want to be around people, so he went down to the beach. He'd hurriedly stopped by the local Pokémon centre, and withdrawn his Lapras from the PC there. Lapras didn't have a name; it was just Lapras. He'd traded it for a pidgey a few months ago. And so on the lapras Latte lounged, lucid but languid. He was still quite afraid of what he'd seen. That certainly wasn't the capture of a Pokémon; it was like... things were phasing in and out of existence, black boxes floating in his eyes. The PC would do that sometimes with people's elite four records if there'd been a connection error. 'At the risk of repeating the narrative, what the hell was that?' said Latte to Lapras, lamenting his latest lot in life.

And of course, the laws of narrative conventions demand that the situation must take a turn for the worse. Of course. It was foggy. Latte wasn't too sure how long it'd been foggy for, but the scene had melted around him. He looked up; the moon was huge in the sky. Which was odd, to say the least. And there was a shape, barely visible in the distance. In Latte's opinion, it wasn't distant enough.

WILD MISSINGNO APPEARED.


	5. FightPKMNBagRun

The music that always came into Latte's head when a wild WHATEVER turned up had started playing, but it had a... stuttering feel to it. The shape came forward. It looked... like a weird tetris block. A backwards L, but chunky. And gray. And covered in... circuits? Scars? Orifices? Looking at it made his eyes hurt, and he had to look away. It seemed to fill up more space than it could, and it seemed to have only two dimensions, while _at the same time_ having multiple features beyond his comprehension. Latte had read H.P Lovecraft. It seemed that Lovecraft had it wrong; the mind just couldn't see the horror that was there, but rather than seeing tentacles and mouths and _goo_ it just put in something to fill the blank. Or was that what Lovecraft had said? His head hurt, like it was leaking out through his eyes. His eyes hurt, too.

Send something out. Fight it off for a while. Run.

'Go, Lapras!' said Latte, making that grave mistake that one in his situation might make. You shouldn't try to attack the cosmic horror with the thing you're riding on. He dived off Lapras, hitting the water with just enough time to turn and see...

His Lapras flickered and turned into a charizard. Latte, dumbfounded, checked his Pokédex. CHARIZARD M, it said. The Charizard folded inwards and vanished. 'MISSINGNO' was getting closer to him.

Latte now panicked, feeling that this was the appropriate course of action given his current situation. He pulled open his bag, looking for something, some means of escape. His bag was full of Master Balls.


	6. Room Shuffle

A Master Ball was a Master Ball, regardless of its origins, right? And MISSINGNO was a Pokémon. Of, course it was, _everything_ that was alive and not human or a tree was a Pokémon. And a Master Ball was a Master Ball.

Latte threw the ball with admittedly weak force. It _plipped_ into the water. Bugger. MISSINGNO was on top of him now, looming over him like a... tetris-block horror from dimensions unknown. It was rather good at looming this way, for rather obvious reasons. Latte threw his open bag at it.

~WILD MISSINGNO WAS CAUGHT:''.++++[[][[]][+M

'What?' said Latte, looking down at his 'dex.

WILD MISSINGNO WAS CAUGHT. Would you like to give a nickname to caught MISSINGNO?

'Er, no, thanks. I think I just died.'

Latte awoke the next day in his bed. There was a Master Ball sat on the desk beside him. Oh dear. Latte looked outside, and the sky was... empty. He couldn't see the sun, and nothing on the ground seemed to have a shadow. Huh. Latte frowned to himself. He knew something was amiss. Of course who could he talk to? His mother was out of town, his father was never mentioned in the plot so he had no idea about him, and he didn't really have any friends, what with being a bit of a snarky bastard.

Since a new paragraph requires some action, he decided to get up and get dressed. His Pokémon weren't in their usual places. He couldn't find his balls, subtext duly noted. Right, that did it, and Latte threw open his bedroom door...

And saw his garden. His bedroom now led to his garden. Why was this? His window said he was still on the second floor, which was quite disorientating. Well, heading into the _crazy teleporting garden_ was probably a bad idea, so Latte decided to escape via the window. He could probably reach a tree or something.

He heaved his window open, and found that despite the view through the glass being of his town, the actual gap led to his basement. This was, as they say, 'bad'. So, that weird Pokémon horror thing was warping reality, was it? Or was he going mad?


End file.
